doubled99:NO ONE CARES. IT DOESN"T MATTER IF YOU ARE RIGHT. NOTHING WILL CHANGE. WE WILL NOT ADJUST OUR LIVES AT ALL. WE WILL SIMPLY ADAPT TO WHATEVER NEW WEATHER PATTERNS EMERGE.GIVE IT UP.

So we should just be quiet and let the anti-science movement completely hijack public discourse and the political process.

Good plan genius. The all-CAPS helped to emphasize that your comment was going to be the most insightful in the whole thread.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."― Isaac Asimov

brantgoose:Funny thing: when you do this, removing the anthropogenic factors such as fossil fuel burning, deforestation, agriculture, land use, cities, concrete making, etc., the model fails to model the current data on climate change using only natural causes. But when you put the human factors back in, bingo! you get the last two hundred years of climate change with a remarkable degree of agreement between the historical data and the climate model! Huzzah!

I can build a model that contains the last two hundred years of climate data, and will break down if any of the numbers are changed, too. Don't even need a Ph.D., just a computer and a database with a basic CRC-128 checksum that is the "important number" that changes if any of the data is changed. That doesn't make it a model for the climate, but it would impress the intellectual rubes and win me power and prestige, if I wanted it. After all, computers are smarter than anyone else in the whole wide world if you can find a new way to hide the "garbage in, garbage out" reality.

/you can also use geocentric equations to predict the movement of Venus in the night sky, if you record enough past observations and create a model for its "epicycles" that predict how it moves based on them//the geocentric model can reach any arbitrary degree of accuracy by adding new epicycles to the equation, correcting for new observations, and otherwise modifying the model to fit both previous observations and any new data that doesn't fit the previous model///but it would still be worthless for actually launching a rocket to reach Venus, because Venus doesn't orbit a fixed and immobile Earth, it orbits the Sun, as does a fully mobile Earth

Farking Canuck:So we should just be quiet and let the anti-science movement completely hijack public discourse and the political process.

Are you sure you're not part of that movement? Because the unassailable Church of AGW uses the same tactics as the anti-science movement, and demands the same degree of obedience, subservience, and suppression of dissent.

/your ignorance is not as good as my knowledge, no matter how many peer-reviewed articles you have//I may not know much, but I do know that any "science" that has to keep changing itself to fit new data is not yet reliable enough to trust lives to

omeganuepsilon:Ambitwistor: Who is dismissing? Who said anything about dismissing?

turnerdude69

Then reply to him with the whole "dismissing" argument, not me.

If you ask me to clarify what I was talking about, and what I was talking about was a response to someone else, then don't get pissed off at me, dumbass.When I quoted you, I quoted a specific statement about your personal and creative rules that skeptics must live by, or some such. That part that I quoted was patently ridiculous, and really, the only point I'm discussing with you as such.

Sorry, you don't get to wear the "skeptic" tag just by being ignorant. I understand that accountants, garbage men, etc. don't have scientific qualifications. They also aren't qualified to judge the correctness of a body of science. Skepticism can't be based on pure ignorance; then it's just prejudice masquerading as skepticism.

Pretending as if I'm some other poster you have a grudge against and attributing his arguments to me will win you no points.

I didn't attribute his arguments to you. YOU attributed my responses to you. You asked me about my position on skepticism, I told you it wasn't valid when you're dismissing fields of science. I never brought YOU into it.

Welcome to Fark! Anything you post can be quoted by others. It's the reason we're here, discussion with random people at random times. If you want privacy, I suggest you go elsewhere.

I didn't ask for privacy, I asked that you pay attention to what's being discussed and not try to turn it into a discussion about your personal beliefs when it's not.

Tatterdemalian:Farking Canuck: So we should just be quiet and let the anti-science movement completely hijack public discourse and the political process.

Are you sure you're not part of that movement? Because the unassailable Church of AGW uses the same tactics as the anti-science movement, and demands the same degree of obedience, subservience, and suppression of dissent.

/your ignorance is not as good as my knowledge, no matter how many peer-reviewed articles you have//I may not know much, but I do know that any "science" that has to keep changing itself to fit new data is not yet reliable enough to trust lives to

The denier movement is based on ridiculous conspiracies about how scientists with 5 figure salaries are money-grubbing con artists while the oil execs, with their 8 figure salaries, are honest and true and only have our best interest a heart.

I have worked 20 years in a materials research center ... half my friends are PhD chemists and chemical engineers ... the idea that any of them (much less all of them) would be part of a world-wide conspiracy to hide a scientific truth is so ridiculous it would be laughable if it wasn't an idea that is lapped up by the unwashed masses.

The data is out in the open ... it clearly shows that AGW is real and is a real threat. All of your misdirection and conspiracies are just part of a disinformation campaign forwarded by the industries that profit from the status quo. Taking a page from big tobacco in the 70's, they know the longer they can sew seeds of doubt the longer they can maintain record profits.

Their most brilliant stroke was convincing the American right that it was a political issue and that the somehow the left was behind the science.

spmkk:Basically, in order to flatline global CO2 emissions by 2050, the developed world would have to cut output to nearly ZERO in 38 years. [...]

That's to stabilize at 2 degrees C. I agree, that's no longer a realistic goal, even though it might be a necessary goal to avoid some bad impacts. However, there is still a huge gap between 2 C stabilization and business-as-usual where policy can work.

I don't entirely agree that the developed countries have to roll over and die because the developing countries won't do anything. Even China is realizing their current growth curve is environmentally destroying their country; they've written a small carbon tax into their next 5-year plan. The standing problem is that nobody really wants to move first; they want to wait to the last possible minute for fear that someone else will reap the advantages. The U.S.'s recalcitrance has historically been a big obstacle to that, as an excuse. It would be tough, but I wouldn't rule out e.g. some modest bilateral U.S.-China agreement that grows into something bigger. (Other people are talking about a border tax adjustment, which could also work, but maybe set off a trade war.) Also, part of the problem with developing countries is that alternatives aren't yet cheap enough, but part of the reason why alternatives aren't yet cheap enough is because the artificially low price of fossil fuels prevents us from deploying enough to exploit economies of scale and learning-by-doing. (China is ironically doing better at this than most countries ...) Developed countries improving their technology, and having an economic incentive to do so, in turn gives other countries more of an incentive to adopt them.

spmkk:If you dress a pig up in a cocktail gown, it's still a pig. Dressing up a policy of abandoning energy sources that exist in abundance in favor of those that are scarce, unreliable, or not nearly ready for prime-time in fancy names like "carbon pricing" is an exercise in self-delusion.

And by the way, this is nonsense. It's precisely carbon pricing that gives the economic incentive to get substitutes ready for prime time. Nobody's going to do it at the relevant scale when fossil fuels are cheaper than they should be because they don't internalize the environmental damages.

doubled99: NO ONE CARES. IT DOESN"T MATTER IF YOU ARE RIGHT. NOTHING WILL CHANGE. WE WILL NOT ADJUST OUR LIVES AT ALL. WE WILL SIMPLY ADAPT TO WHATEVER NEW WEATHER PATTERNS EMERGE.GIVE IT UP.

So we should just be quiet and let the anti-science movement completely hijack public discourse and the political process.

Good plan genius. The all-CAPS helped to emphasize that your comment was going to be the most insightful in the whole thread.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."― Isaac Asimov

I'm not saying what we should do. Or what is smart or right.I'm simply saying that is the way it is.People seem to want some sort of mass, global conference where all world leaders publicly state that global warming is real, it's happening now, and we all need to come up with a new, more responsible way to live, eschewing fossil fuels for new, safer forms of energy, and changing our perspectives on this planet and our role on it.

This will never happen. We like our lives the way they are. We like driving our cars with their shiatty exhaust. We like wasting recources for our entertainment and comfort. Even with acceptance of the climate change as fact, then what? Nothing.We will simply adapt to whatever new climate changes come. With as little change to our current lives as possible.

doubled99:I'm not saying what we should do. Or what is smart or right.I'm simply saying that is the way it is.People seem to want some sort of mass, global conference where all world leaders publicly state that global warming is real, it's happening now, and we all need to come up with a new, more responsible way to live, eschewing fossil fuels for new, safer forms of energy, and changing our perspectives on this planet and our role on it.

This will never happen. We like our lives the way they are. We like driving our cars with their shiatty exhaust. We like wasting recources for our entertainment and comfort. Even with acceptance of the climate change as fact, then what? Nothing.We will simply adapt to whatever new climate changes come. With as little change to our current lives as possible.

/btw, Asimov is a shiatty writer

I am well aware of what you are saying and I am saying you are wrong.

The lie that deniers like to push is that all the "greenies" want to implement 'economy destroying' plans. While it is true that not all proposals are completely reasonable, I do not support Koyoto for example, this does not mean that there are not many plans, large and small, that can work.

The fact is that there are plenty of countries that have become technological leaders in clean energy and have profitable industries in the field. Industries that we have missed out on in North America because of denier propaganda. What could have been money and jobs here are now money and jobs in Europe and Asia.

Most individuals that I know have much smaller carbon footprints than they did even 10 years ago. The improved efficiencies on cars and appliances alone have people getting greener simply when they replace their old stuff with new.

The fact is that people are already making significant differences without any pain at all. Younger generations are already growing up with much greener mind-sets and will push this further. Cleaner air and reduced dependency on middle east oil are good things that everyone should be moving towards ... but they deniers scream their lies and strawmen because they've bought into the propaganda that their is still doubt.

Farking Canuck:Tatterdemalian: Farking Canuck: So we should just be quiet and let the anti-science movement completely hijack public discourse and the political process.

Are you sure you're not part of that movement? Because the unassailable Church of AGW uses the same tactics as the anti-science movement, and demands the same degree of obedience, subservience, and suppression of dissent.

/your ignorance is not as good as my knowledge, no matter how many peer-reviewed articles you have//I may not know much, but I do know that any "science" that has to keep changing itself to fit new data is not yet reliable enough to trust lives to

The denier movement is based on ridiculous conspiracies about how scientists with 5 figure salaries are money-grubbing con artists while the oil execs, with their 8 figure salaries, are honest and true and only have our best interest a heart.

I have worked 20 years in a materials research center ... half my friends are PhD chemists and chemical engineers ... the idea that any of them (much less all of them) would be part of a world-wide conspiracy to hide a scientific truth is so ridiculous it would be laughable if it wasn't an idea that is lapped up by the unwashed masses.

The data is out in the open ... it clearly shows that AGW is real and is a real threat. All of your misdirection and conspiracies are just part of a disinformation campaign forwarded by the industries that profit from the status quo. Taking a page from big tobacco in the 70's, they know the longer they can sew seeds of doubt the longer they can maintain record profits.

Their most brilliant stroke was convincing the American right that it was a political issue and that the somehow the left was behind the science.

Protip: If you're going to attack one "conspiracy theory," try not to insist that another conspiracy theory is behind it. Otherwise you're just being the "It wasn't an Al-Qaeda conspiracy that destroyed the WTC, IT WAS THE JOOOOOOOOOS" guy.

<b><a href="http://www.fark.com/comments/7480535/81229909#c81229909" target="_blank">m00</a>:</b> <i>6) And before we go through all this, are we positive that global warming is necessarily detrimental to our habitat?</i>

This is not "unknown."

<I>2) If yes, would the earth be warming (anyway) if not for humans?</I>

What are you even basing this on?

You really just don't want to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus, do you?

<b><a href="http://www.fark.com/comments/7480535/81230808#c81230808" target="_blank">SpectroBoy</a>:</b> <i>Why yes, scientific understanding of the world DOES change in THIRTY YEARS.

/ Unlike religious or superstitious ignorance.</i>

The keyword in your case being "ignorance."

Please. Stop spreading the "they told us we would have global cooling" myth. It's one of the easiest bullsh*t denier "arguments" to dismiss.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."― Isaac Asimov

Yeah, if Asimov had called me out in the way you just got called out, I would be inclined to talk shiat on him, too.

Tatterdemalian:Protip: If you're going to attack one "conspiracy theory," try not to insist that another conspiracy theory is behind it.

So you are suggesting that the oil companies are not funding the "think tanks" that put out the denier talking points? Because the funding trail has been shown here on Fark before (possibly in this thread).

Uncle Tractor:m00: 6) And before we go through all this, are we positive that global warming is necessarily detrimental to our habitat?

Dunno. Is flooding all our costal cities and turning large swaths of land into desert detrimental?

IMO we're too dumb as a species, we elect politicians that are too short-sighted, and we're too lazy personally to fix this in time. At least we'll get our act together when food can no longer be produced outdoors.

/norwegian//hate the way my country is contributing to the problem///thorium FTW

Yeah I lived in Oslo for 4 years. I became racist against Norwegians. :) I have so many fantastic stories.

But seriously, geological history has shown that in warmer times vast swaths of land have not been deserts. In fact, all global warming seems to do is make everything uniformly trend towards tropical, rather than make tropical desert or make temperate desert. The maximum temperatures don't really increase; rather just the minimums do. There is not a working model of climate that accurately describes this happening (although, we know from data of past epochs it's like this).

Sea levels will rise, but a lot more land in the interior will become habitable (or more comfortable). If this were the Eocene, we could be comfortable on beaches in the North Pole, hanging out with palm trees in Antarctica, or living life comfortably in the tropics. It's amazing to me that when the earth has experienced global warming in the past, the data has been that global temperatures have evened out into something that's very pleasant for our species.

Farking Canuck:Tatterdemalian: Protip: If you're going to attack one "conspiracy theory," try not to insist that another conspiracy theory is behind it.

So you are suggesting that the oil companies are not funding the "think tanks" that put out the denier talking points? Because the funding trail has been shown here on Fark before (possibly in this thread).

I'm suggesting that "what's really happening" is infinitely more important than "which is more likely."

/which is more likely, that some terrorists squatting in a cave in Buttfark, Afghanistan managed to destroy the WTC even though all their previous attempts were the stuff of slapstick comedy//or that the terrifyingly competant Mossad used agents pretending to be Al-Qaeda terrorists to trick the US into fighting Israel's enemies///good thing Bush cared more about "what really happened" than "which is more likely"

I'm looking at charts of global temperatures that go back more than a "convenient" number of years. In fact, I posted one in this thread. I'm looking at charts that go back hundreds of millions of years, and really the ones that are relevant to us is when the continents were basically in their current configuration -- so Paleocene and later.

You guys are disco stu. The "science" is that disco record sales doubled between 1973 and 1976. Doesn't mean disco is a sound investment.

m00:But seriously, geological history has shown that in warmer times vast swaths of land have not been deserts. In fact, all global warming seems to do is make everything uniformly trend towards tropical, rather than make tropical desert or make temperate desert.

Actually, deserts do expand, as the Hadley cells do. But there are still tropics, extratropics, etc.

The maximum temperatures don't really increase; rather just the minimums do.

The max temperatures do increase substantially in the high latitudes (polar amplification), but not so much in the tropics.

There is not a working model of climate that accurately describes this happening

Sea levels will rise, but a lot more land in the interior will become habitable (or more comfortable). If this were the Eocene, we could be comfortable on beaches in the North Pole, hanging out with palm trees in Antarctica, or living life comfortably in the tropics.

This is an extremely naive perspective on what climate impacts will look like. Hint: reorganizing the entire climate of the planet within a century is going to have no small impact on nations, societies, economies, and ecosystems that have adapted to a particular climate over the course of human civilization. And no, people in the tropics don't get off easy; they do get warmer, albeit not as much as the the poles do, and this is a problem because they're closer to our tolerance for habitability (and happen to contain a lot of poor people at present to boot). The Eocene may have been as much as 12 C warmer than today; that could render large portions of the planet nearly uninhabitable to humans. (The linked study has the same coauthor and similar model version to the above Eocene study I linked.) We're not likely to return to Eocene levels of warmth from global warming (although it's theoretically possible), but it's still no walk in the park. Even 3-5 C over land would be a huge deal.

m00:I'm looking at charts of global temperatures that go back more than a "convenient" number of years.

Looking back to the Eocene doesn't change either the attribution of the current warming to humans, or the projections of patterns of likely future warming. So don't pretend like you have some superior perspective on the problem.

Denying Climate change is about as stupid as denying that the sun rises.

Way to completely miss the point I was making.

Mead's research was done and published using what everyone at the time THOUGHT was good science.

It was peer reviewed by people that were supposedly academically sound and of good judgment. It was celebrated as a breakthrough piece of work that pulled back the curtain and exposed the myth that all successful societies were male dominated.If played right to the sensibilities of the audience for whom the review of its fitness was to be conducted.

As such, rather than put it under a skeptical eye and have people point out the glaring inaccuracies and inconsistencies in it that would have come to light if people had just FORCED her to provide proof of her claims... they let it stand. End result was that it took DECADES to discredit her and even then, even today her work is still being touted by some people with ideological axes to grind as the truth.

To that end, I look at the evidence about ACC and it pisses me off that people aren't putting more scrutiny on the science that the proponents of the theory are citing.

Specifically, the computer climate models that the proponents are using are the same models that the climate scientists are refusing to release their climate modeling software code for peer reviewhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/05/science-climate-emai l s-code-release

What's more is that later builds of the code that were put under review were stated to be "largely unintelligable" to the people charged with maintaining the codebase... and using the same datasets that were previously used failed to reproduce results previously obtained. This to me speaks that the code base and experimental models are being massaged to give expected results rather than actual results. Hence my skepticism in their work.

I don't know about you... but this is troublesome to me as a programmer and SDET. If you have code that says something or predicts something... than you sure as fark better release the code so we can see if your algorithms are sound... and they better give reproducible results ( a key concept of the scientific method is reproducibility of results)

I'll not even get into how many of the weather sampling stations that are being cited as showing significant temperature increases have had their surroundings go from undeveloped land to highly developed land. Hint: it's hotter in developed areas because of reflective surfaces.

In short. What should be done is climate scientists should be required to disclose their computer model code for review if they make a claim (that's just good science because you are revealing your experiment format) and the weather stations should be reviewed yearly for developmental changes and relocated to similar environments as the previous year if they have changed. Again.. .that's just good science.

Again I point you to this statement.

Occasionally a message carried by the media finds an audience so eager to receive it that it is willing to suspend all critical judgment and adopt the message as its own

I don't have an agenda... other than that good science requires good oversight and good practices. Without them... you don't have good science.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."― Isaac AsimovYeah, if Asimov had called me out in the way you just got called out, I would be inclined to talk shiat on him, too.

"called out", huh?. Hilarious.All I stated was the general attitude towards this issue, not my personal opinion. You want to disagree with my earlier post? If that's not the way it is, then why do you and so many others get so upset and spend so much time opining on the issue? You say most everyone is in agreement and things are being done to change it? Then why all the wailing? Just because you're upset a few fools on the internet don't agree?You people spend so much time arguing you can't even tell if someone is in agreement at any point.

Bell-fan:Specifically, the computer climate models that the proponents are using are the same models that the climate scientists are refusing to release their climate modeling software code for peer review

Nobody is ever going to independently review millions of lines of code that require months to run on thousands of cores, so it's kind of a moot point. Model errors of practical importance aren't going to show up as code defects anyway like off-by-one errors or whatever. They're going to result from approximations being made in the physics parameterizations, and most likely aren't going to be software bugs at all (in the sense of deviating from the intended specification); they're just choices of approximations that may turn out to be not good enough representations of the underlying physics.

But anyway, many of the modeling centers have released their code, if you want to knock yourself out trying.

What's more is that later builds of the code that were put under review were stated to be "largely unintelligable" to the people charged with maintaining the codebase... and using the same datasets that were previously used failed to reproduce results previously obtained. This to me speaks that the code base and experimental models are being massaged to give expected results rather than actual results.

Oh give me a break. What it speaks to is 20 years of code development by non-programmers who didn't use version control and broke their earlier builds.

I'll not even get into how many of the weather sampling stations that are being cited as showing significant temperature increases have had their surroundings go from undeveloped land to highly developed land. Hint: it's hotter in developed areas because of reflective surfaces.

The urban heat island effect has been studied extensively and shown to have little influence on the global temperature record. You can leave the urban sites out altogether and get similar results. Some surfae temperature data products correct for these biases and others don't bother; they both end up quite similar to both each other and to the satellites, which have no such problem.

In short. What should be done is climate scientists should be required to disclose their computer model code for review if they make a claim

This is sometimes done, sometimes not, but isn't likely to have much practical effect if you're talking about the big Earth System models. You might want to wander over to Steve Easterbrook's "Serendipity" blog and discuss this with him; he's a computer scientist whose area of research is climate models and the software practices surrounding them. I think you'll find the real issues aren't the ones you're concerned with.

and the weather stations should be reviewed yearly for developmental changes and relocated to similar environments as the previous year if they have changed.

They are, now, in the CRN, but again, it's not of the practical relevance you think it is.

Denying Climate change is about as stupid as denying that the sun rises.

Way to completely miss the point I was making.

Mead's research was done and published using what everyone at the time THOUGHT was good science.

It was peer reviewed by people that were supposedly academically sound and of good judgment. It was celebrated as a breakthrough piece of work that pulled back the curtain and exposed the myth that all successful societies were male dominated.If played right to the sensibilities of the audience for whom the review of its fitness was to be conducted.

As such, rather than put it under a skeptical eye and have people point out the glaring inaccuracies and inconsistencies in it that would have come to light if people had just FORCED her to provide proof of her claims... they let it stand. End result was that it took DECADES to discredit her and even then, even today her work is still being touted by some people with ideological axes to grind as the truth.

To that end, I look at the evidence about ACC and it pisses me off that people aren't putting more scrutiny on the science that the proponents of the theory are citing.

Specifically, the computer climate models that the proponents are using are the same models that the climate scientists are refusing to release their climate modeling software code for peer reviewhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/05/science-climate-emai l s-code-release

What's more is that later builds of the code that were put under review were stated to be "largely unintelligable" to the people charged with maintaining the codebase... and using the same datasets that were previously used failed to reproduce results previously obtained. This to me speaks that the code base and experimental models are being massaged to give expected results rather than actual results. Hence my skepticism in their work.

I don't know about you... but this is troublesome to me as a progr ...

I see. So you think Richard Muller got his code from a code base somewhere, ran it without checking it for errors, then got the conclusion he didn't want (or maybe he just fudged his code to get the results he didn't want) just so he could then publicly admit that he had been wrong all along?

Ambitwistor:Bell-fan: Specifically, the computer climate models that the proponents are using are the same models that the climate scientists are refusing to release their climate modeling software code for peer review

Nobody is ever going to independently review millions of lines of code that require months to run on thousands of cores, so it's kind of a moot point. Model errors of practical importance aren't going to show up as code defects anyway like off-by-one errors or whatever. They're going to result from approximations being made in the physics parameterizations, and most likely aren't going to be software bugs at all (in the sense of deviating from the intended specification); they're just choices of approximations that may turn out to be not good enough representations of the underlying physics.

Whoa.. whoa.. .whoa! Please, dude, do NOT try to lecture me on code review and what people will and will not do. That's what scientists and engineers DO. Let me explain and give you a little education about what I know and have experience doing vs what you know. I worked for the Justice dept at The Technical Committee http://thetc.org/TheTC.html as an SDET and helped review those millions of lines of code that made up Windows OS over a period of 6 years Biggest antitrust lawsuit EVER and I was part of the team that oversaw it. So YES people will and have gone through bigger projects than that. Before that I worked for a material science company and reviewed and rewrote code for use in the LAWave device http://www.ccl.fraunhofer.org/download/LA_Wave.pdf to measure thinfilm coatings via non destructive laser surface acoustic wave propagation..Furthermore, sir, you are clearly illiterate in terms of how a simulation is run. Numbers of cores do NOT matter and regardless of how many RUNS you do the method in which the data is processed is controlled by the algorithm. As you don't get this basic fact you CLEARLY miss the point of a code review. A code review is not done to check for stupid syntactical errors... it's there to check the algorithms that are used in the code and how they interpret the data. The scientists that are refusing to release their code are refusing to let anyone VERIFY that their code hasn't been jobbed to provide the results that they want... instead of what the mathematical model provides. Instead they are basically saying "This is our code and it says this... but if you want to make sure that we're not lying... go write your own code... you can't see how ours works."

In short... sit the fark down junior and shut the fark up... you don't know what you're talking about.

To me this refusal to release code smacks of the old "water powered car" scam. Where you have a car that you CLAIM runs on water, but hidden inside the car is a motor that runs on gasoline. You pour the water in the car, run it around the track and then claim "see it runs on water" and when someone demands you show the science proving it runs on water, you claim "It's a secret... and we can't show you... but here's the process... why don't you independently verify it"

In short.. it's smells like bullshiat.

Furthermore, arguing that they shouldnt release it because noone will go to the trouble of reviewing it isn't sound reasoning. Yes, someone will... that's what farking peer review is pal. It's peers reviewing your experiments... scrutinizing the results and frequently trying to reproduce your findings to independently verify you are right or wrong.

But anyway, many of the modeling centers have released their code, if you want to knock yourself out trying.

No, you clearly didn't read the article. Nearly all the major groups working on climate models are refusing to release their code, not just the CRU. The ones that have have, admitted that the code bases are nearly incomprehensible spagetti code and need to be unobfuscated.

What's more is that later builds of the code that were put under review were stated to be "largely unintelligable" to the people charged with maintaining the codebase... and using the same datasets that were previously used failed to reproduce results previously obtained. This to me speaks that the code base and experimental models are being massaged to give expected results rather than actual results.

Oh give me a break. What it speaks to is 20 years of code development by non-programmers who didn't use version control and broke their earlier builds.

Riiight... because Non-programmers can actually write code that can be run and take advantage of Large cluster servers and super computers. Hint, anyone that can write a full climate model able to be run on a super computer IS a programmer by definition. Also good coding practice is PART of scientific process. You can't write obfuscated code and submit it for peer review... it's not accepted anywhere... why? because you can use Obfuscated code to hide rigging of a model. All code used in submission for findings must be documented and written in the open. The only sections that can be excluded are patented code that protects a substantial trade secret (IE encryption or innovative methods of solving problems that are significantly faster than industry standard) and you aren't allowed to patent a trade secret if your research is paid for out of public monies.

What this means is simply this; that the code needs to be cleaned up, peer reviewed, and verified so that it can be REVIEWED FOR ACCURACY and so peers can determine if it's a good simulation or bullshiat code that has been rigged to report what the researcher wants it to say.

I don't give a damn about if climate change is human caused or not... but the scientific community deserves to peer review the simulation code to determine if the science is sound in it and it follows those rules when it runs.

Any scientist worth their salt should be demanding that the code be cracked open for a full review.

What I don't get is why you're so resistant to that idea.

What is the HARM of forcing the code base to be opened up to completely open peer review.

If you're confident that the science is good... then the worst that might happen is that the peer review will reaffirm that the models are sound but poorly written.

I'll not even get into how many of the weather sampling stations that are being cited as showing significant temperature increases have had their surroundings go from undeveloped land to highly developed land. Hint: it's hotter in developed areas because of reflective surfaces.

The urban heat island effect has been studied extensively and shown to have little influence on the global temperature record. Yo ...

If they are confident that the models are accurate... then crack open the code and let independent scientists and science teams review it. If it's good... it stands on its merits. If not... then maybe some teams will rewrite the code and we'll get actual results that can be independently verified with reproducible data.

Part of the key to good science and the scientific method is that you have open and frank discussion about HOW you arrived at your results. If you are afraid to have your results scrutinized and have to shroud how you got them under secrecy ... chances are your science is of the junk variety.

Tatterdemalian:/which is more likely, that some terrorists squatting in a cave in Buttfark, Afghanistan managed to destroy the WTC even though all their previous attempts were the stuff of slapstick comedy

The survivors of the USS Cole are still laughing about those guys' previous attempts. Great example!

m00:But seriously, geological history has shown that in warmer times vast swaths of land have not been deserts. In fact, all global warming seems to do is make everything uniformly trend towards tropical, rather than make tropical desert or make temperate desert. The maximum temperatures don't really increase; rather just the minimums do. There is not a working model of climate that accurately describes this happening (although, we know from data of past epochs it's like this).

Sea levels will rise, but a lot more land in the interior will become habitable (or more comfortable). If this were the Eocene, we could be comfortable on beaches in the North Pole, hanging out with palm trees in Antarctica, or living life comfortably in the tropics. It's amazing to me that when the earth has experienced global warming in the past, the data has been that global temperatures have evened out into something that's very pleasant for our species.

That depends how much warmer it'll get, of course. Also, the climate change will do more than turn Norway tropical; it'll make the weather go nuts. We need predictable weather for outdoor food production. I think we'll lose that.

spmkk:Keizer_Ghidorah: "chuckufarlie: Keizer_Ghidorah: You know, natural or man-made, maybe we could come up with ways to reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere and ways to remove the excess already there, instead of screaming and flinging blame everywhere.

You know, just in case. Wouldn't want our only home in the universe to go to shiat.

The IPCC has a solution. They want to close down all of the industry in the Western World and distribute it to the developing countries. And they have identified India and China are developing countries. Does that sound like good planning to you?

Well, here's an idea: come up with SOME OTHER SOLUTIONS! You don't abandon the entire concept because one solution is obviously stupid.

How about...Entertaining the radical possibility that a couple of degrees' worth of change over a century or two won't necessarily bring about the f'ing apocalypse?

Nobody seems to have tried that approach yet...for some reason any discussion of climate change is loaded with the certainty of a scorched-earth endgame, when in reality it's a slow process that in all likelihood the human race will be quite able to continue adapting to one day at a time.

But no -- any hint of the slightest temperature change MUST mean that we have to scramble our jets, declare an emergency, and SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. or else we'll turn into Venus and fry in hellfire before our grandkids graduate high school.

This is why it's a political issue as well as a scientific one. It's not because oil executives value their salaries over the human race. It's not because Republicans hate the earth. It's not because ignoramuses reject science. It's because people justifiably question the value of trying to solve an environmental problem of uncertain and greatly hyperbolized consequences by creating a series of definitively catastrophic (but questionably ef ...

Oil and gas won't last forever. Burning them does release pollutants. Is it really THAT awful of an idea to work on cleaner, renewable energy sources as a solution to both of these very real facts?

HighZoolander:Bell-fan: HighZoolander: Bell-fan: First off, not a denier.

Denying Climate change is about as stupid as denying that the sun rises.

Way to completely miss the point I was making.

I see. So you think Richard Muller got his code from a code base somewhere, ran it without checking it for errors, then got the conclusion he didn't want (or maybe he just fudged his code to get the results he didn't want) just so he could then publicly admit that he had been wrong all along?

Wow... nice.

I'd like to just toss this out there.

Straw man: This is the logical fallacy of refuting a caricatured or extreme version of somebody's argument, rather than the actual argument they've made. Often this fallacy involves putting words into somebody's mouth by saying they've made arguments they haven't actually made, in which case the straw man argument is a veiled version of argumentum ad logicam.

But no, I'm saying that to show due dilligence their code SHOULD be opened up and reviewed for accuracy. Why? Because other researches in the past HAVE falsified or massaged data to give the results they expected... or wanted to appear.

If the code that they are relying on to interpret the data is accurate and coded correctly... then they should withstand scrutiny, right? So what's the problem with just opening it up to full peer review?

But hey, if you don't believe that you should have open and honest peer review I know a couple guys (Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann) who would like to have you fund their research back in 1989.

Bell-fan:HighZoolander: Bell-fan: HighZoolander: Bell-fan: First off, not a denier.

Denying Climate change is about as stupid as denying that the sun rises.

Way to completely miss the point I was making.

I see. So you think Richard Muller got his code from a code base somewhere, ran it without checking it for errors, then got the conclusion he didn't want (or maybe he just fudged his code to get the results he didn't want) just so he could then publicly admit that he had been wrong all along?

Wow... nice.

I'd like to just toss this out there.

Straw man: This is the logical fallacy of refuting a caricatured or extreme version of somebody's argument, rather than the actual argument they've made. Often this fallacy involves putting words into somebody's mouth by saying they've made arguments they haven't actually made, in which case the straw man argument is a veiled version of argumentum ad logicam.

But no, I'm saying that to show due dilligence their code SHOULD be opened up and reviewed for accuracy. Why? Because other researches in the past HAVE falsified or massaged data to give the results they expected... or wanted to appear.

If the code that they are relying on to interpret the data is accurate and coded correctly... then they should withstand scrutiny, right? So what's the problem with just opening it up to full peer review?

But hey, if you don't believe that you should have open and honest peer review I know a couple guys (Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann) who would like to have you fund their research back in 1989.

So you think Muller didn't provide exactly the kind of scrutiny you're arguing needs to be done?

I have no problem with increased openness and transparency in science (nice way to demonstrate a straw man though).

The point, which you seem utterly oblivious too, is that since Muller got the same results that everyone else got (and who knows how many people created their own code for their own work), it is vastly unlikely that the consistent finding of warming is an artifact created by poorly written code (to say nothing of the thousands of results that don't depend on this kind of code at all).

So maybe a little bit of noise in the signal could be accounted for if there are coding errors, and maybe making the source code open could help resolve those and increase public confidence in the science, but to remain skeptical of the big picture at this point seems to be missing the forest for a tiny piece of funny-looking lichen on one tree.

m00:I'm looking at charts of global temperatures that go back more than a "convenient" number of years. In fact, I posted one in this thread. I'm looking at charts that go back hundreds of millions of years, and really the ones that are relevant to us is when the continents were basically in their current configuration -- so Paleocene and later.

What you should be looking at is the science relevant to now, not trying to amateurishly patch together something that makes you look like you know WTF you're talking about.

Again, there is no debate in the scientific community. Man-made climate change IS occurring, and it's a big deal.

Going out of your way to "prove" otherwise just makes you look like a tool. Yeah. I know you didn't want to hear that.

doubled99:This will never happen. We like our lives the way they are. We like driving our cars with their shiatty exhaust. We like wasting recources for our entertainment and comfort. Even with acceptance of the climate change as fact, then what? Nothing.We will simply adapt to whatever new climate changes come. With as little change to our current lives as possible.

Bell-fan:Whoa.. whoa.. .whoa! Please, dude, do NOT try to lecture me on code review and what people will and will not do. That's what scientists and engineers DO.

I'm a former software engineer, and now a computational physicist, so don't pretend to lecture me on code review either. Code reviews of that scale are possible, but there's no funding for historical review of existing codebases, almost nobody competent to actually do this, and no specifications to compare to in the first place. You're also mixing up verification and validation. Nobody is going to turn up a mis-implemented dynamical core in code review. The things that are important in these models are that the numerical schemes actually produce good physical approximations. That's what would actually need to be done, and isn't going to be.

Furthermore, sir, you are clearly illiterate in terms of how a simulation is run.

Ha ha ha.

Numbers of cores do NOT matter and regardless of how many RUNS you do the method in which the data is processed is controlled by the algorithm. As you don't get this basic fact you CLEARLY miss the point of a code review. A code review As you don't get this basic fact you CLEARLY miss the point of a code review. A code review is not done to check for stupid syntactical errors... it's there to check the algorithms that are used in the code and how they interpret the data.

GCM modelers already verify their code along the way, i.e. have other developers review it before check-in. If you want to have some independent group go and to that for the entire existing code base, you can, but it's not going to accomplish much other than satisfy your paranoia. And, again, you're not going to usefully "check the algorithms" without running the code and performing testbed simulations, i.e. validation.

The scientists that are refusing to release their code are refusing to let anyone VERIFY that their code hasn't been jobbed to provide the results that they want... instead of what the mathematical model provides.

Ha ha ha. What are you expecting, a lookup table embedded in the code with pre-specified predictions?

And who are these "scientists" and what code are you talking about anyway? You still don't appear to know the difference between CRUTEMP data processing code and climate models.

But anyway, many of the modeling centers have released their code, if you want to knock yourself out trying.

Citation needed

CESM, GISS ModelE, UVic, blah blah.

Furthermore, arguing that they shouldnt release it because noone will go to the trouble of reviewing it isn't sound reasoning.

I'm not saying that's a reason not to release it, I'm saying what will happen if they do release it.

Yes, someone will... that's what farking peer review is pal. It's peers reviewing your experiments... scrutinizing the results and frequently trying to reproduce your findings to independently verify you are right or wrong.

I guarantee you, climate modelers have absolutely no interest in picking apart the code of other climate modelers. They are far more interested in developing their own models. If you want to fund some independent set of "auditors" or whatever, go ahead, but as it stands: Ain't. Gonna. Happen. Climate modelers don't "independently verify" the results of other climate models. They can't really do so, because again what's important is not verification but validation: not proving that somebody else's model is implemented the way they intended, but identifying the physical/numerical reasons why the algorithm produces the output it does. What modelers do is intercomparisons: they run two different models and then try to determine whether the results differ because one model used a different approximation than another, etc.

Riiight... because Non-programmers can actually write code that can be run and take advantage of Large cluster servers and super computers.

Again, you're utterly confused as to who you're criticising. The "refuse to release the code" ClimateGate nonsense that you keep citing has nothing to do with climate models or supercomputers. The CRU temperature code was hacked together by some random meteorologist self-trained in programming with no software engineering standards. Climate models are completely different beasts. Or rather, mostly different beasts: they still contain old legacy code from random grad students and such before their modern engineering standards were implemented.

Hint, anyone that can write a full climate model able to be run on a super computer IS a programmer by definition. Also good coding practice is PART of scientific process.

Ha ha ha. Good scientific code is the exception, not the norm, in my experience. Modern climate models are actually some of the exceptions, but lots of code is just one-off hacks by grad students. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means it's bad by software engineering standards (modularization, encapsulation, commenting, documentation, etc.).

You can't write obfuscated code and submit it for peer review... it's not accepted anywhere... why?

Ha ha ha. Scientific code is almost never submitted for peer review. It's not a requirement for publication, and no reviewers are willing to spend the time to review it. The only review that occurs typically goes on inside the modeling group itself, unless they have a user community who optionally give feedback to the developers.

I don't give a damn about if climate change is human caused or not... but the scientific community deserves to peer review the simulation code to determine if the science is sound in it and it follows those rules when it runs.

Unlike you, the scientific community trusts its own model developers.

Any scientist worth their salt should be demanding that the code be cracked open for a full review.

By who? Who is going to give up their career to review some modeling group's code? If the NSF or whoever wants to fund that, fine, let it happen. I just think it's going to be a waste of time.

What is the HARM of forcing the code base to be opened up to completely open peer review.

Nowhere have I advocated that model source should be closed. I'm just pointing out that if it's opened, it's not going to have the practical impact that you think it will.

Part of the key to good science and the scientific method is that you have open and frank discussion about HOW you arrived at your results.

Climate modelers discuss this all the time, amongst themselves, because they're all trying to improve their models and borrow ideas from each other. There isn't a big incentive for them to spend their time breaking this down for public consumption.

Considering that Muller had this to say about the data being used in other programs... yes. "The existing conclusions were based on extremely complex global climate models. With these, you could never track down how many adjustable parameters they had, or how many hidden assumptions there were. We used a very simple approach."

But discovering his findings agreed with the scientists at the heart of the so-called Climategate leak hasn't led Muller to soften his view of what he calls the "scientific misconduct" uncovered. He says: "As scientists, we have to be completely open with our data. The UK group purposefully hid the discordant data, and they did it in order to make sure that people drew the same conclusions that they drew. To me, that's misconduct."

Never mind that on Muller's own team some of his co-researchers on BEST stated that his methodologies are over simplistic and inaccurate.

(Guardian UK article)One of the strongest voices criticising the (Muller's) study comes from the BEST team itself. Dr Judith Curry, head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, declined to be a co-author on the latest BEST study, and says on her blog she does not "see any justification in [BEST's] argument for" the group's statement that its warming data fits with manmade carbon dioxide. Curry's not alone: former climate scientist William Connolley claims BEST has done "none of the attribution work you'd expect".

When people on Muller's team step forward like that and refuse to be included in his paper... there's problems.

But I think you miss my point....It's not climate change I have issue with... I'm reasonably certain it's ongoing and anyone with sense can see it.

It's the whole human caused aspect I'm dubious of. That we're in it is clear... but laying it all at man's feet... I'm not so sure. The world's coming out of an ice age... that means it's gotta warm up.. and we don't know how fast that actually happens since we've never lived through one as a race and documented it.

Bell-fan:It's the whole human caused aspect I'm dubious of. That we're in it is clear... but laying it all at man's feet... I'm not so sure. The world's coming out of an ice age... that means it's gotta warm up.. and we don't know how fast that that actually happens since we've never lived through one as a race and documented it.

A few facts:

1. The world isn't coming out of an ice age. It already came out of an ice age. We've been gradually cooling back into an ice age for about 8000 years. The current warming has nothing to do with the ice age cycle. Of course, there could be other modes of natural climate variability that can cause warming or cooling on long timescales.

2. We have proxy temperature records of deglaciations from ice cores that go back 800,000 years, so yes, we know how fast that happens. Not that that's relevant, because we're not actually coming out of an ice age (see point 1).

3. Attribution of warming to humans is often done by comparing climate model output to observations, but you don't need a complex climate model to do this. In fact, in many respects you don't need a climate model at all; observations alone rule out most natural sources of decadal-to-century scale climate change (the Sun, volcanoes, the oceans, etc.).

Bell-fan:Never mind that on Muller's own team some of his co-researchers on BEST stated that his methodologies are over simplistic and inaccurate.

You're confusing two issues. I completely agree that Muller's approach to attribution is over simplistic and inaccurate. That is, taking his temperature record and using it to draw conclusions about human vs. natural causes of warming. However, that is an entirely separate issue from his methodologies for constructing the temperature record in the first place, and the quality of that data product.

Fun facts you may or may not care about:Up until the 1980s, we were putting a lot of sulfur compounds in the air, which (a) cause acid rain and (b) act as anti-greenhouse-particles (they reflect sunlight). The sulfur was from burning coal and other industrial processes. Because of the work relating sulfur deposition and acid rain, in the 1980s we started trading S credits in a cap-and-trade system, spearheaded in part by Brian Mulroney, PM of Canada at teh time. (He was a weirdo conservative in a lot of ways but did have a good environmental record.) S to the atmosphere was confounding the climate change signal; now that we've removed a lot of it, and we've been steadily adding more CO2, we're seeing more climate change.

Also, in the big picture, we're moving toward an ice age somewhere in the next 50 000 years, based on changes in the Earth's tilt and rotation around the sun. But that is a long time away.

Bell-fan:But I think you miss my point....It's not climate change I have issue with... I'm reasonably certain it's ongoing and anyone with sense can see it.

It's the whole human caused aspect I'm dubious of. That we're in it is clear... but laying it all at man's feet... I'm not so sure. The world's coming out of an ice age... that means it's gotta warm up.. and we don't know how fast that actually happens since we've never lived through one as a race and documented it.

And again, back to where I started, you are simply ignoring or unaware of the evidence concerning human attribution.

chuckufarlie:Sorry but the IPCC scientists did not use ice core samples as proxy data for temperature readings. They used tree ring growth.

Different groups used...both!Tree ring width corresponds to longer growing season/warmer temperatures (trees grow more when it's warm) but the tree ring record only goes back so far.The isotopic ratio of both H and O in H2O relates to temperature; this is what the ice core ppl use and it goes back farther than tree ring data.

Guess how good the correlation is when the datasets overlap, though! Guess!Answer: pretty damn good

Endive Wombat:BigBurrito: Endive Wombat: All I am going to add to this is that my understanding about those who question global warming is this (and let's be honest, it is a major sticking point): What is its cause and what, if anything can we do about it?

I believe many people have stopped worrying about the cause, and very, very few holdouts cling to denying its existence.

The consequences of global warming are still very much up for debate, even within the sciences. What happens, when does it happen, and what may change the outcome? Hell, if we have a very large Volcanic eruption the ash will cool the atmosphere. T

I think that is where the former deniers are moving to. Better to debate future consequences, that can be neither proved or disproved. Kind of like conspiracy theories, it has the ability to grab peoples imaginations. That is a good and fun thing and has the benefit of enabling research to proceed without as much political interference.

Well, several hundred years ago, the Earth was warmed (Medieval Warm Period) and cooled (Little Ice Age) with what I think most people will agree as zero influence by humans as we were not contributing much to the total Earth's CO2 output at that point in time.

Again, with what little I have studied, I am more apt to believe that sun spots and other Earthly/Nature based factors contribute 98% of global warming. While I am not denying the fact that we more than likely contribute somewhat to Global Warming...I just suspect that there are other, much larger factors at play that try as we may, we will never be able to overcome and will have almost zero ability to do anything about it.

Sunspots have not correlated with temperature data since about the 1980s.

That's because there was no data to support it - the continents look like they match up (especially Africa and S. America) but it wasn't until magnetic imagining of the seafloor in the 1960s that it caught on, because there was data to support the observation.